Welcome to Matriarchy

The stories in this collection are important. They are important in telling the story of the Bay Area, its culture and its people. They are important in sharing the role of food during times of crisis, during times of loneliness, times of abandonment, times of senselessness and hopelessness. These stories are inspired and assisted by La Cocina, the San Francisco nonprofit that serves as a food-business incubator for low-income women, especially immigrants.

What we call “California cuisine,” the local ingredients and seasonal menus that focus on sustainability and relationships with farmers and producers — that whole fig on a plate thing — was created ...

I wish we had a home video of dinnertime at my house, circa 1992. I was 14 then, my older brother was 16, and our little sister was 10. By then my mother, who had stayed home with us throughout our ...

Many years ago, when Dulce De Leche was a fledgling drag queen fresh from Seattle, she asked me if I would be her drag mother. I took a deep breath and told her I needed to think about it — not because I ...

You’ve heard of the 1976 Judgment of Paris, the competition that proved to the stuffy French establishment that California, too, was capable of great wine. You may remember the media hoopla around one ...

In 1973, Joanne DePuy was still named Joanne Dickenson and was getting a divorce. Her three kids were grown, mostly. Apart from a part-time stint at a travel agency she’d never really had a job.
“I ...